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Rob Hart's "The Last Safe Place" is GREAT! I didn't think there was any hope left for the zombie story, but he sure as hell found it! TLSP has an engaging main character who makes tough moral decisions and has to live with them, a great setting, and a breakneck pace that is perfect for the size of this novella! I don't care what you think of zed books, you NEED to read this if you like damn fine writing!
This was a fantastic zombie novella. It left me wanting more. It had a quick pace, interesting plot twists, and sense of humor that wasn't over the top but really added to the story.
Good BuildupGood set and setting. However, the ending felt somewhat rushed and underwhelming. The novella works like a good stepping stone for a more fleshed out full zombie saga.
I tore through this in about two hours. My only complaint is that it wasn't three times as long, or maybe that there aren't several more installments about this same group of characters in this same setting. Great stuff. Terrific cover art, too.
A refreshing new look at an overdone genre.
So nice, I bought it twice! Digital and print editions.With zombie media reaching critical mass, it's very easy to be completely engulfed with a lot of mediocre efforts from those looking to cash in on the success of shows like the Walking Dead. Fortunately, Rob Hart eschews taking the easy way out and provides an engaging and original twist on some standard tropes in the genre. While the length is short, (I blew through this in less than hour)I found the story to be satisfying and leaving me wa...
A short but sweet novella about one mans past journey to safety to find his wife, which runs concurrently with the mans present situation held out in a survival commune on Governors Island which has been divided in two castes; the skilled and the unskilled. During the flow he is betrayed and we discover he has committed what he feels is an atrocity which leads him to believe karma is coming for him.
In just under 200 pages, author Rob W. Hart manages to add a breath of fresh air to a genre that can so easily be stale. From the very interesting location (Governor's Island, a brilliant touch by Hart) to mutating (or perhaps evolving) undead, there are hardly any cliches here.Hart also manages, in such few pages, to sweep a wonderful arc in both characterization as well as plot. The main character, Sarge, a fierce cop who keeps laying down the law even after the apocalypse, has a grizzly exter...
I am not Rob's target audience for "The Last Safe Place." I like classic literature, imagistic short stories, and poetry. Now and again I'll go for YA and romance, even feminist sci-fi. This zombie novella is none of the above and yet it still managed to drag me in and eat my brains and heart with great smacking of lips. (Yeah, I know. Pun city. There's more where that came from.)Rob uses very sparse language and goes on a kind of rhythm. Short sentence, long sentence. Long sentence is the compa...
With the heavy influx of zombie fiction (and so much of it either derivative of past cinematic work or flat out poorly craft and uninspired.) flooding the market over the last several years, you often times think there's nothing left to be said within the confines of the subgenre. But then you run into a work such as The Last Safe Place. The novella is fast paced with some genuine scares scattered through out. There are, of course, certain elements which are common in every zombie story, but wha...
A unique take on the zombie apocalypse, with special pickled zombies, a few cheap bus-'sploding thrills, a human element for our protagonist to negotiate (with one "Woohoo! In. your. face!" moment), along with all the skull splatting madness that you'd expect from the genre.As with any book that I love, it has to have good strong characters, and there's plenty of that going on. I'd have enjoyed seeing a few of them branch out and develop further, but unfortunately with a novella there's little t...
The adage (I read this somewhere, I swear it) is that zombies aren't what make zombie stories interesting. It's how people deal with the zombies that make the zombie stories interesting. Because there's not much new about about shambling, reanimated corpses at this point than there are about tsunamis or earthquakes or cannibalistic Uncle Barry. The threats are a fulcrum that characters are levered against.In this short piece of fiction, Hart wedges his characters in the tightest of spots, and th...
The Last Safe Place is a really good zombie novella that manages to avoid cliches and brings something a little new to the genre. Evolving zombies. Sure Romero's Land Of The Dead had evolving zombies but these aren't the kind that start to think. These undead are gaining armor from being submerged in the water surrounding Governor's Island in New York. The author even gives a medical explanation as to why. In fact one of the creepiest moments in the book is the image of zombies underwater graspi...
The Last Safe Place approaches the typical zombie story in a new way. The survivors are in a novel location (Governor's Island - in the heart of NYC but inaccessible - perfect holdout for the end of the world), the monsters are mysteriously different, and the stakes are high. Fast moving, exciting... a great read.